Election Day, 1999

Even A Martyr Can't Unite Russia's Democrats

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — The flowers piled atop the grave of Galina Starovoitova are a lie. All that they are--fresh and vibrant and sweet smelling--are things the democratic reform movement in Russia is not.

Starovoitova was a powerful symbol, if not a powerful player, in that movement. She was a tireless advocate for human rights, an outspoken defender of democracy and an aggressive opponent of anti-Semitism, corruption and political extremism. She was an early ally of President Boris Yeltsin.

But the independent federal deputy was shot to death a year ago, assassinated because she talked too much, or knew too much, or cared too much. Starovoitova was found outside her apartment building, shot three times in the head, an apparent contract-murder victim. Thousands of friends and allies, including three former prime ministers, mourned her.

Starovoitova's allies screamed in outrage at her murder. They vowed to unify in her memory. Only together, they said, could they protect their democratic ideals, could they challenge those forces that first pushed Starovoitova to the political margins and then took her life.

The unity did not last past her funeral. A year later, with nationwide parliamentary elections due Sunday, liberal forces remain splintered and weak.

The Union of Right Forces party of Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Kiriyenko, two young men deemed models for a new Russia, will struggle to gain any seats in the new lower house of parliament. And the liberal Yabloko party has seen its poll numbers decline steadily, raising fears that Yabloko may win ever fewer seats in the next Duma than it controls in the current.

Petty rivalries make headlines. Last month, Russian television viewers were treated to a nasty showdown between Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and Anatoly Chubais, the architect of Russia's woeful economic reforms.

Judging by their public comments about democratic politics, free markets and Russia's relationship to the West, Yavlinsky and Chubais have more in common than not. Yet they battle like Cold War antagonists. Chubais even deemed Yavlinsky a traitor--a powerful word in any nation but one with special resonance in xenophobic Russia--for questioning (horrors!) Russia's strategy in Chechnya.

Indeed, the brutal and baffling Chechen war is where Starovoitova's voice is most sorely missed.

An early and ardent supporter of Yeltsin, Starovoitova split with the Kremlin leader when he ordered the first military offensive in Chechnya in 1994. Starovoitova was that rare Russian politician who loudly and openly defended the rights of the nation's ethnic minorities, and in the Chechen war she saw an attack motivated in part by ethnic hostility. She also saw it as futile.

In that aspect, Starovoitova was proved right. The 1994-96 Chechen left at least 30,000 people dead. It ended in a humiliating pullout by Russian troops.

The Russian military insists this Chechen war will end differently. Casualties will be kept to a minimum, except of course among the murderous Chechen fighters. Only criminals will be targeted, the generals say. Sadly, Chechnya does have plenty of those.

Maybe all this military bravado is warranted, though few objective analysts think so. Surely Starovoitova would have something sharp and logical and courageous to say in response.

She would demand better treatment for the more than 230,000 civilian refugees who have fled the Russian attacks in Chechnya. She would protest the stepped-up police harassment in Moscow and other cities of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus. She would take the side of Russian mothers fighting to keep their 18-year-old boys from being sent to war.

In much of this, Starovoitova might have stood alone. She held the respect of her fellow liberals, but in truth she wielded little political power. It is hard to believe that even she could have swayed her allies from falling into line behind this Chechen war, as most every Russian politician of every stripe has chosen to do.

Last month Starovoitova's supporters marked the one-year anniversary of her murder. Unsurprisingly to most Russians, the case remains unsolved. Only about 100 people, with just one or two big names among them, showed up at the graveside memorial service.

They said some prayers for the woman some deemed the conscience of the new Russia. They threw their flowers. They moved on.